NEW YORK, United States –
The shooting down of an Iranian-made drone by a United States warplane
in southeast Syria on Tuesday was the latest sign of Washington’s
greater willingness to confront Damascus and its allies since Donald
Trump became president.

It came on the heels of US forces knocking a Syrian army jet out of the
sky near Raqqa on Sunday. Iran-backed militias have repeatedly come
under US fire recently and, in April, Trump ordered cruise missile
strikes on a Syrian airfield, ostensibly responding to a poison gas
attack.

Analysts contacted by Middle East Eye praised Trump’s greater readiness
to use force in Syria than his predecessor, Barack Obama. Others warned
that, without a broader endgame strategy, US muscle flexing risked a
deeper confrontation with Syria or its backers, Iran and Russia.

“Trump’s very muscular on foreign policy. He doesn’t look at the
ramifications, repercussions or the bigger picture. He’s tactical, as
opposed to strategic, and I think he’s going to escalate against the
Russians,” Barak Barfi, from the New America Foundation, a think tank,
told MEE.

Moscow reacted angrily to the US downing Syria’s jet, saying it would
treat US-led coalition aircraft flying west of the Euphrates River in
Syria as potential targets and will track them with weapons systems, but
stopped short of threatening to fire on them.

After a US F-15 jet destroyed an armed Iranian drone near al-Tanaf base
along Syria’s eastern border on Tuesday, Russia’s deputy foreign
minister Sergei Ryabkov railed against the US-led coalition for
“complicity with terrorism”.

Will Trump raise tensions with Iran or Russia?

For Jennifer Cafarella, from the Institute for the Study of War, a think
tank, the Pentagon’s approach is sound – use force to deter aggression
from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his backers
and focus on the stated goal of defeating the Islamic State (IS) group.

“I don’t think the US risks a shooting war with Iran or Russia because
it has taken no offensive action and has consistently messaged that it
has no offensive intent,” Cafarella told MEE, adding that aggression
from Damascus-aligned forces was the real danger.

“The question is whether the pro-Assad coalition intends to contain and
deter the US, or if it intends to pick an actual fight. I currently
assess the former, but we must be alive to the less likely but dangerous
possibility of the latter.”

Trump, a Republican, has delegated more authority to his generals to
make battlefield decisions. By launching 59 Tomahawk missiles on a
Syrian government airfield in April, he was lauded for enforcing a “red
line” against chemical weapons use that Obama, a Democrat, failed to
apply in 2013.

The question is whether the pro-Assad coalition intends to contain and deter the US, or if it intends to pick an actual fight

- Jennifer Cafarella, Institute for the Study of War

Like his predecessor, Trump has focused on defeating IS. But as the
religious extremists’ self-proclaimed caliphate dwindles, the
Assad-aligned forces are increasingly competing for newly liberated
territory with their US-backed rivals.

They include the US-backed Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF),
which control four neighbourhoods of Raqqa and are close to encircling
the de facto IS capital. Assad-allied forces, meanwhile, are focused
further east on the mostly IS-held oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor.

Government forces skirted around al-Tanaf base on 9 June and reached the
Iraqi border for the first time since 2015. That effectively blocked
US-led coalition forces in their garrison, and secured a land corridor
connecting Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq.

“US Generals do not want this to happen and will use force to prevent
it, as they have done,” Bob Freedman, a Johns Hopkins University
scholar, told MEE.

“The Assad regime, in my view, would like to precipitate a conflict
between Russian and US forces, and would like to exploit Russian
military forces to regain all of Syria — that is, fight to the last
Russian.

“I don’t think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants this and will
not take the chance to shoot down a US plane with its SAM-400’s.”

No clear strategy

As Assad strives to win his country back, with help from Russia and
Iran, Trump and his national security aides have not advanced a clear
strategy of what Syria will look like, or who will run it, once the
six-year-old bloodbath grinds to a halt.

All the while, Washington is riven over whether its chief goal is
routing IS or halting Iran’s growing influence in Syria and across the
Middle East,” Jonathan Cristol, a scholar at the World Policy Institute,
a think tank, told MEE.

“It has no coherent strategy in Syria, but the administration’s
instincts are to oppose IS and Iran at every turn. The problem is that
Iran and IS oppose each other in Syria. Navigating that requires nuance
and sophistication that this administration lacks,” Cristol said.

“I don’t think Trump’s team has any desire to escalate any conflict with
Russia, quite the contrary; and I think that direct confrontation with
Iran is something it would stumble into rather than plan on.”

For Francis Boyle, a University of Illinois law scholar, the military
escalation under Trump raises a constitutional problem. US attacks on IS
and al-Qaeda have been justified under the open-ended Authorization for
Use of Military Force passed by Congress after the 9/11 attacks in
2001, but attacks on Assad’s government forces and allies “ha[ve] no
justification whatsoever”, said Boyle.

“It is obviously impeachable. But pro-war Democrats don’t raise it
because it would constrain the US president’s war-making capacities,”
Boyle told MEE.

“Israeli strategic interests are obviously served by a breakup of Syria;
as is the case for much of the US establishment. The Saudis are clearly
on board. The Russians, rhetoric aside, are likely simply looking for
some scraps.

“The big losers are the Syrians and most of the other people of the region,” Boyle said.